Possibilities

A “possibility exists” for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to get a deal with the U.S. Justice Department that would allow him to return home from Moscow, former Attorney General Eric Holder tells Yahoo Politics’ Michael Isikoff. Holder also said that Snowden’s “actions spurred a necessary debate.”

The leaked Hacking Team documents show that the FBI, DEA, and U.S. Army have all bought its products, enabling them “to take remote control of suspects’ computers, recording their calls, emails, keystrokes, and even activating their cameras,” Cora Currier and Morgan Marquis-Boire report for The Intercept.

Marietje Schaake, a longtime member of the European Parliament and champion of internet freedom, responds on her blog to the Hacking Team disclosures by saying that it is time for Europe to hold such companies accountable for selling their services to human rights abusers. While Hacking Team has long denied such connections, internal documents show Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Nigeria, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, the UAE, and Uzbekistan among its customers.

The social traffic mapping company Waze, owned by Google, is testing a carpooling service in Tel Aviv called RideWith, Davey Alba reports for Wired. The idea is to help people with the same commute find each other.

Amazon appears to be surreptitiously preventing some people from reviewing their friends’ books—or people who Amazon thinks are their friends, using undisclosed data-mining methods, Consumerist’s Chris Moran reports. He cites the case of one blogger, Imy Santiago, who has been prevented from posting a review of an e-book and has received several responses from the company indicating that it was blocked “because your account activity indicates that you know the author.” She denies that they have a friendship, only saying that she follows many authors on social media. (So, while Amazon will show you potential purchases using data about similar people’s purchases, it won’t let a friend make a direct recommendation?)

The Los Angeles Times has hired Dexter Thomas to cover Black Twitter, Kristen Hare reports for Poynter, along with several other hires aimed at expanding audience engagement.

In the Daily Beast, Stereo Williams dissects “The Power of Black Twitter.”

An Argentinian programmer who reported a security flaw in a local e-voting system in Buenos Aires was raided by police, Glyn Moody reports for ArsTechnica.

Here on Civicist, Karissa McKelvey shares the story of a group of volunteer coders who are forcing the U.S. Department of Education to actually help student debtors by building software that makes it simple for them to file debt discharge claims (finally).